Really pissed off at the moment & not sure what to do about it. My mom has this longtime friend/neighbor who the rest of the family has never really liked. My never-talks-shit-about-anybody dad used to refer to this woman as "The Village Voice" for being the neighborhood gossip and always needing to know/get into other peoples' business. I've pretty much always disliked her for being nosy and tattling on me to my mom because one of her kids was in detention with me during high school. Oh and making snide comments to my mom during that time because I'd died my hair purple.
In the time since my dad died, she's done some nice things for my mom like flower arrangements and taking her out to lunch on her birthday and the 1 year anniversary of his death. But she's also made a lot of inappropriate and frankly, mean underhanded comments:
+ When my dad's obituary ran in the newspaper, she called my mom up to tell her that she'd seen it and "Gosh it was rather long."
+ At the reception after his service (where we included the obit in the program and I spoke for the family), she came up and during some general conversation about how to handle the service, made the same comment again about the obit. Everybody else has said how impressed they were with both my writing (I wrote the obit) and my eulogy (which I also wrote). She started to imply that she knew better than my mom about obituaries, like my mom is an idiot who blew too much money on the obit. My oldest (since childhood) friend was standing there, and as politely as I could, my response was "Yes, it's a shame how much money papers overcharge for this sort of thing." She tried to make another snide comment along those lines and as politely as I could I told her "You know, that's really not an appropriate thing to say."
Lately she's been dropping these comments to my mother about seeing my car by the house during the week and when I answered the phone at lunch time one time, she's been on this "what's the Gov doing over at your house?" My mom actually asked me to not be at the house when they went out for the birthday lunch in order to avoid these questions. Which I did because I'd been planning a day trip for that week.
Yesterday they were on the phone and afterwards my mom was like "Well, we'd better clear out the junk in the garage." Not because it's years of accumulated crap and we've nagged her about it. No, apparently Helen Lovejoy has taken it upon herself to drive by the house during the week and "just happened to notice" my car parked out front. And asked about it?! When I heard this, I about blew up - Who the fuck does this woman think she is? I'm sure she's dying to find out that I've lost my job and am staying with my mom, so she can gossip about it. And she's probably pissed that I politely told her off at the service.
I told my mom that we need to clean the garage out anyways, but that this woman's behavior is bullshit. If I had to guess, the junior high antics point towards somebody who's insecure and feels like she has to "prove" her superiority. Her husband's a retired state civil engineer and none of her kids (one of whom is estranged from her) have made it past high school. It sounds fucked up, but my honest reaction is that seeing as how my dad's obit and service pointed out all of his accomplishments and popularity in the community, she's jealous of my mom. Actually when I told my mom that, she mentioned that her doctor (they go to the same doctor) said the same thing to her awhile ago: "She's jealous of you."
If there's time this week to finally pitch all of the accumulated shit out of the garage, I'm fine with doing that. But seriously - fuck this woman and her Gladys Kravitz/Helen Lovejoy antics. I don't even give a fuck what she thinks of me. She's never liked me because I'm supposedly a weirdo with purple hair who gets in trouble at school (hey I'm a weirdo with purple hair who got better grades than her kids and went on university). But seriously FUCK HER for trying to act that way towards my mother. My mom has her faults, but she's a genuinely kind person who's a bit of an introvert and not always socially confident. Oh and FUCK HER for pulling this bullshit on somebody who's in grief after losing her partner of 50+ years. I'm really tempted to go over there and ring the doorbell and be like "I understand you've been asking around about my personal business," but that would totally mortify my mom.
I'm trying really really hard to take the high road, because obviously this woman is full of shit and just jealous of my mom. But I also feel like maybe she needs to be called out on that behavior so she knocks it off. But at the moment ,all I feel like doing is kicking her ass for trying to embarass my mom.
If these reports are true, that doesn’t sound very super at all. In fact, it sounds just like the traditional VC mentality that super-angels were supposed to be fighting against — the win-at-any-cost, anything-is-fine-if-I-get-my-cut attitude that startups have been up against for decades. What happened to the “sharing your pain” approach? What happened to the “act like a startup” motto that some have advocated?
This latest development, if true, is the continuation of a perverse trend in which everyone chooses to focus on the investors instead of on startups and what is good for them. After all, the entrepreneur is supposed to be the one at the heart of this whole process — who is looking out for his or her interests? No one, it seems. It’s ironic that the movie “Wall Street 2″ is going to be opening in theatres soon, and the atmosphere in the VC world seems to be very much like the one that Gordon Gekko raved about in the original.
Everyone knows the VC game is tough, even for super angels — especially when hundreds of them throng to a YCombinator event to see just a handful of promising startups. No one thinks it should just be one big Kumbaya singalong, by any means. But it’s one thing to run a business and another to be advocating that everyone gang up to drive valuations down, or to stop the use of convertible notes — which are a startup-friendly trend that many non-super angels and startup advisors have been promoting. It’s a little sad to hear that some of the same people who have been saying publicly that they were on the side of startups may be saying something completely different in private.
The last time professional investors spent so much time thinking about what they were getting out of the deal rather than focusing in building a healthy startup community, it was the late 1990s, and it didn’t end well. If the super-angels and traditional VCs alike spent a bit more time thinking about the entrepreneurs at the heart of this whole equation and a little less thinking about ways to line their own pockets at his or her expense, we would probably all be a lot better off.
Related GigaOM Pro content (sub req’d):
Did We Really Learn Anything From the Dotcom Crash?
Lessons From Twitter: How to Play Nice With Ecosystem Partners
Why Google Should Fear the Social Web
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Really pissed off at the moment & not sure what to do about it. My mom has this longtime friend/neighbor who the rest of the family has never really liked. My never-talks-shit-about-anybody dad used to refer to this woman as "The Village Voice" for being the neighborhood gossip and always needing to know/get into other peoples' business. I've pretty much always disliked her for being nosy and tattling on me to my mom because one of her kids was in detention with me during high school. Oh and making snide comments to my mom during that time because I'd died my hair purple.
In the time since my dad died, she's done some nice things for my mom like flower arrangements and taking her out to lunch on her birthday and the 1 year anniversary of his death. But she's also made a lot of inappropriate and frankly, mean underhanded comments:
+ When my dad's obituary ran in the newspaper, she called my mom up to tell her that she'd seen it and "Gosh it was rather long."
+ At the reception after his service (where we included the obit in the program and I spoke for the family), she came up and during some general conversation about how to handle the service, made the same comment again about the obit. Everybody else has said how impressed they were with both my writing (I wrote the obit) and my eulogy (which I also wrote). She started to imply that she knew better than my mom about obituaries, like my mom is an idiot who blew too much money on the obit. My oldest (since childhood) friend was standing there, and as politely as I could, my response was "Yes, it's a shame how much money papers overcharge for this sort of thing." She tried to make another snide comment along those lines and as politely as I could I told her "You know, that's really not an appropriate thing to say."
Lately she's been dropping these comments to my mother about seeing my car by the house during the week and when I answered the phone at lunch time one time, she's been on this "what's the Gov doing over at your house?" My mom actually asked me to not be at the house when they went out for the birthday lunch in order to avoid these questions. Which I did because I'd been planning a day trip for that week.
Yesterday they were on the phone and afterwards my mom was like "Well, we'd better clear out the junk in the garage." Not because it's years of accumulated crap and we've nagged her about it. No, apparently Helen Lovejoy has taken it upon herself to drive by the house during the week and "just happened to notice" my car parked out front. And asked about it?! When I heard this, I about blew up - Who the fuck does this woman think she is? I'm sure she's dying to find out that I've lost my job and am staying with my mom, so she can gossip about it. And she's probably pissed that I politely told her off at the service.
I told my mom that we need to clean the garage out anyways, but that this woman's behavior is bullshit. If I had to guess, the junior high antics point towards somebody who's insecure and feels like she has to "prove" her superiority. Her husband's a retired state civil engineer and none of her kids (one of whom is estranged from her) have made it past high school. It sounds fucked up, but my honest reaction is that seeing as how my dad's obit and service pointed out all of his accomplishments and popularity in the community, she's jealous of my mom. Actually when I told my mom that, she mentioned that her doctor (they go to the same doctor) said the same thing to her awhile ago: "She's jealous of you."
If there's time this week to finally pitch all of the accumulated shit out of the garage, I'm fine with doing that. But seriously - fuck this woman and her Gladys Kravitz/Helen Lovejoy antics. I don't even give a fuck what she thinks of me. She's never liked me because I'm supposedly a weirdo with purple hair who gets in trouble at school (hey I'm a weirdo with purple hair who got better grades than her kids and went on university). But seriously FUCK HER for trying to act that way towards my mother. My mom has her faults, but she's a genuinely kind person who's a bit of an introvert and not always socially confident. Oh and FUCK HER for pulling this bullshit on somebody who's in grief after losing her partner of 50+ years. I'm really tempted to go over there and ring the doorbell and be like "I understand you've been asking around about my personal business," but that would totally mortify my mom.
I'm trying really really hard to take the high road, because obviously this woman is full of shit and just jealous of my mom. But I also feel like maybe she needs to be called out on that behavior so she knocks it off. But at the moment ,all I feel like doing is kicking her ass for trying to embarass my mom.
If these reports are true, that doesn’t sound very super at all. In fact, it sounds just like the traditional VC mentality that super-angels were supposed to be fighting against — the win-at-any-cost, anything-is-fine-if-I-get-my-cut attitude that startups have been up against for decades. What happened to the “sharing your pain” approach? What happened to the “act like a startup” motto that some have advocated?
This latest development, if true, is the continuation of a perverse trend in which everyone chooses to focus on the investors instead of on startups and what is good for them. After all, the entrepreneur is supposed to be the one at the heart of this whole process — who is looking out for his or her interests? No one, it seems. It’s ironic that the movie “Wall Street 2″ is going to be opening in theatres soon, and the atmosphere in the VC world seems to be very much like the one that Gordon Gekko raved about in the original.
Everyone knows the VC game is tough, even for super angels — especially when hundreds of them throng to a YCombinator event to see just a handful of promising startups. No one thinks it should just be one big Kumbaya singalong, by any means. But it’s one thing to run a business and another to be advocating that everyone gang up to drive valuations down, or to stop the use of convertible notes — which are a startup-friendly trend that many non-super angels and startup advisors have been promoting. It’s a little sad to hear that some of the same people who have been saying publicly that they were on the side of startups may be saying something completely different in private.
The last time professional investors spent so much time thinking about what they were getting out of the deal rather than focusing in building a healthy startup community, it was the late 1990s, and it didn’t end well. If the super-angels and traditional VCs alike spent a bit more time thinking about the entrepreneurs at the heart of this whole equation and a little less thinking about ways to line their own pockets at his or her expense, we would probably all be a lot better off.
Related GigaOM Pro content (sub req’d):
Did We Really Learn Anything From the Dotcom Crash?
Lessons From Twitter: How to Play Nice With Ecosystem Partners
Why Google Should Fear the Social Web
robert shumake
Enslaved DLC detailed <b>News</b> - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net
Read our news of Enslaved DLC detailed. ... Enslaved developer diary #3 Monday. Enslaved - first 15 minutes 15 September, 2010. Latest News. Move demos flood PS Store . Enslaved UK pre-order deals detailed ...
Premier League football <b>news</b> from the Barclays Premier League <b>...</b>
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Google New: It's Google <b>News</b> About New Google Stuff In One Place
In terms of blog networks, no one ever seems to talk about Google, but they actually have one of the biggest. The search giant has well over 100 blogs devoted to everything from general company news to niche things that only webmasters ...
robert shumake
Enslaved DLC detailed <b>News</b> - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net
Read our news of Enslaved DLC detailed. ... Enslaved developer diary #3 Monday. Enslaved - first 15 minutes 15 September, 2010. Latest News. Move demos flood PS Store . Enslaved UK pre-order deals detailed ...
Premier League football <b>news</b> from the Barclays Premier League <b>...</b>
Check out the latest Premier League football news from the Barclays Premier League.
Google New: It's Google <b>News</b> About New Google Stuff In One Place
In terms of blog networks, no one ever seems to talk about Google, but they actually have one of the biggest. The search giant has well over 100 blogs devoted to everything from general company news to niche things that only webmasters ...
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